Pandas Don't Know Rights From Lefts

A short review this time.  This is a game I've been comically struggling with.

So I'm a huge fan of Kung-fu.  Everything kung fu is win in my book.  From bad 60's films to the real life guy that can do hand stands on nothing but his thumbs...thumb-stands?  So it's only natural that I quite enjoy Dreamwork's Warcraft knock off with the "Kung-fu Panda" series.  So I picked up the game a while ago...

Game: Kung-fu Panda 2
Dev: Griptonite Games
Platform: PS3, Wii, DS, Xbox 360
Rating: 5 Too much sticky rice.

I get by with a little help from my friends

First off, this wrongly titled game isn't the movie "Kung-fu Panda 2".  It takes place right after the fall of Lord Shen in the aftermath.  Of course there's a vacuum of power and of course there's a new evil so behold, video game.  This is more "Kung-fu Panda 2.5" if you want to go all numbers.  It's the epilogue, 'nuff said.

To be honest, I haven't gotten through it entirely.  Story wise, what I have seen I have rather enjoyed.  The mini games are interesting and entertaining with the kinect (depending on how finicky my sensor is being).  And the transition of game play from one scene to another is rather smooth.  But the biggest folly of this title is the game mechanics themselves.  Which is a shame, really.

Combat.  With Kung fu, there's fighting (as the well known disco song suggests).  And this... well... you can clearly see what they were aiming for, but they really missed their mark.  Combat is split into 2 trees (that take turns in alternating phases).  An attack tree and a defense tree.  Attack tree you have various "moves" single punches, single kicks, jump, and double fist and from there they fit and interact with various situations (like an opponent dodges, you flail about in that direction and activate a jump move).  Kinect has difficulty reading double punches since your fists push in the same line as your torso so your hands become invisible to the sensor some times.

Rickshaw...

Defense tree is the biggest issue, and it's a really important issue at that.  Defense is broken down with single blocks, double block, quick time event counters, and dodges.  Dodges are the worst idea in this game since square wheels.  This notion of dodging attacks is carried out poorly.  The idea makes sense, the execution was sloppy. And when I say sloppy, I mean to the point where it makes the game practically non-playable.

Here's the idea: An enemy glows when they are doing an "unblockable attack".  They "charge" up in a slow motion movement and the player dodges in the correct direction of their movement.  Novel right? Sounds great.  They even had the enemies glow different colors depending on which way your supposed to dodge.  Sadly, they didn't tell the game they did that.  So enemies glow randomly between the two colors (red and red-orange, which is GREAT for the color blind) and your supposed to "guess" which way they are attacking.  Even worse, most enemies carry huge round shields which block a good 70% of your line of sight so you can't tell "how" they are "charging" their attack or which way they are going to move.  Even worse, they all lean to the right, so instinct says "dodge left".  You're always in the line of fire.

The models flow like in the film

When it's just small fish, yeah, you can get through a small pack of mooks alright.  But a boss? Forget about it.  You have to dodge 3-4 times in the same defense phase on every defense phase, and each failed attempt takes huge chunks of health from you.  The game is unforgiving as well.  If you fail on the super healthed out boss, you have to start at the very beginning of the level.  square one, and survive the minions again.  Depending how the first few fights go, depends greatly how many dodge hits you can take.  And you WILL take the dodge hits.  It's safer to just stand still than to try and guess where it's going.  Probably get the same results.  There's no changing of difficulties to make up for the poor game mechanic either.  Your just suck with it, and it's made me very frustratingly stuck as well.

I really want a cheat code that just lets me watch the cinema scenes instead of try to chew through the bad mechanics.

No Kung fu is complete without a pagoda

Now, keep in mind, this was a very early kinect release.  So the fine tuning of the kinect sensor really hasn't come through yet (it still hasn't, but it's getting there).  So things are really understandably choppy.  But it almost feels like nobody played the game before it got put out on shelves.  It doesn't matter if the game is "finished", some one had to have seen that it couldn't really be played very well.

There's a very easy, easy, easy fix that I'm sure they could probably patch it in through PSN, what ever the wii has, or Xbox Live.  Simply add an arrow to the GUI.  Dodge in the direction of the arrow.  Easy peasy.  This isn't an argument of difficulty or skill as some of you might argue.  Think of it more like playing Tosh.0's Rock, Paper, Balls.  There is no winner, only pain.

A quick note: I do like their modeling, and the visuals are pretty great.  It really catches the feel of the movies...just wish I could see everything in the game...


Game: Kung-fu Panda 2
Dev: Griptonite Games
Platform: PS3, Wii, DS, Xbox 360
Rating: 5 Too much sticky rice.